Last night, Major League Baseball legend Reggie Jackson was asked in a Fox Sports show about how he felt about returning to Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., for a Negro League tribute game. The 78-year-old, who started his MLB career in Birmingham in 1967, did not hold back. He told interviewer Alex Rodriguez about his experience of racial slurs and being denied entry to restaurants and hotels, in a city where the Ku Klux Klan was committing attacks of racial hatred. Here's the story from NBC, including the full video.
Willie Mays died yesterday at 93. Our sports editor has curated this Storyboard of tributes to an American icon. "His extraordinary statistical accomplishments speak for themselves, but the grace, joy, energy and intellect with which he played the game allowed him to separate himself from other great players of his, or any, era," writes Lincoln Mitchell for @TheConversationUS.
[Braves] We join the baseball community in mourning the loss of Willie Mays, one of the greatest to ever play the game. Our thoughts are with Willie’s family and loved ones. https://www.rawchili.com/3539632/
Mays, an all-star center fielder for the NY & San Francisco #Giants in the 1950s & ’60s whose powerful bat, superb athletic grace & crafty baseball acumen earned him a place atop the historic greats, died June 18 at 93.
With such demigods as Jackie Robinson & Hank Aaron, Mays, from Jim Crow-era Alabama, was one of the earliest Black players to reach exalted heights in formerly segregated major leagues.
Baseball's all-time leaders lists have changed overnight with the integration of the Negro Leagues into Major League Baseball statistics. Josh Gibson is now officially one of the greatest players of all time, beating Ty Cobb for career batting average and Babe Ruth for slugging percentage and OPS. His great grandson, Sean Gibson, now hopes that the MVP award will be renamed in his honor. The trophy was previously named after Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball's first commissioner, who played a key role in keeping baseball segregated. “How ironic would it be for Josh Gibson to replace the man who denied more than 2,300 men the opportunity to play baseball in the major leagues,’’ Sean Gibson told USA Today.
@loren Not explicitly. There are places in the MLB rule book where a player is referred to as a “man” but you could probably challenge that as not referring to a literal male human.
The way things are going for the White Sox this year they might want to get a pelican for left field. Can’t do any worse.
It's warm up time in this newest installment in the Brinkley Yearbook series. Will Alexandra make the cut and help the historically boys baseball team defend their 9-year championship title?
Today In Labor History April 11, 1947: Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player to play in the major leagues.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the day baseball player Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's all-time home run record. Here's a @Flipboard Storyboard to honor the occasion. In the words of announcer Vin Scully: "What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol.”
"Will they play the anthem?” I asked.
“The which?”
‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”
“Oh, the national ballad. What for? This is a ball match, not the Senate.”
At least one bit of jingoistic idiocy hadn’t yet lodged in the national psyche, I thought.
-- from If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock, published in 1989 and set during baseball's infancy in the late 1860s. Just like his character Sam Fowler, Brock was ahead of his time.
Today in Labor History March 21, 1946: The Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington, the first professional African American football player in the U.S. since 1933. His father played baseball in the negro leagues. His uncle was the first black lieutenant in the LAPD. In college, he played both baseball and football. He was a teammate of Jackie Robinson’s at UCLA. Many people thought he was a better baseball player than Robinson. Leo Durocher supposedly offered him a contract to play major league baseball, but only if he played in Puerto Rico first, which Washington refused to do.
I love that my kid is as into collecting baseball cards as I was. It's so much fun getting to relive the thrill of opening packs and pulling out a glossy parallel of a great player. Or the joy of getting a Phillies player (glossy Zack Wheeler and a Brandon Marsh!) and watching my son immediately put them in his "Phillies Players Only" binder. 😃 ⚾
Pitchers and catchers report next week, and it's around this time of year that, if I can, I try to read something baseball-related. Yesterday I picked up a book that I read when I was a teen and remember enjoying it very much: If I Never Get Back by Darryl Brock. It's sort of like if Field of Dreams and Back To The Future had a baby, and it's great. #Books#Baseball#Bookstodon#AmReading#Fiction#Sports#MLB#FridayReads@bookstodon
Minnie Minoso has been incandescent lately. Today, he went 4-4, HR, 3 RBI, SB, pacing a Detroit win that was never really in doubt. Senators' swoon continues.